Personally I love the rotor explosion of unoccupied heli's, I use it to destroy my own helis so they respawn and someone else or I can take it later.
Also, I don't even remember being involved in rotor explosion death like you're describing.
There are ways to play around it from both sides, if you're the one piloting a helicopter you can jiggle it around so its very hard to hit, if you wanna destroy it, just keep distance.